Gangstar: Crime City

Boy, Grand Theft Auto creator Rockstar has a lot to answer for. Not to the politicians or parental lobbies who've slammed the violence in its games. But to those of us who are sick of the number of clone games that GTA has inspired.

Which brings us neatly to Gangstar: Crime City, a game so much like GTA, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Gameloft just put a PS2 disc in a photocopier and Tippexed out the name. There's even an odd similarity to one or two bits of artwork in both games.

You can't blame them, though. As the best-selling game in the world, GTA has a lot going for it, so whoever (legally) nails the art of replicating its closely-guarded formula on mobile deserves some credit.

As you'll have guessed, Gangstar: Crime City is a city-based crime-capade. You start as a lowly wannabe gangster, working your way up the ranks by performing courier tasks, taking down foes, protecting hos... y'know, the usual stuff.

However familiar, it's safe to say your love (or otherwise) of this game may depend on your reaction to dialogue like this: "Sit back, relax, I'm 'bout to drop some knowledge on yo' biznass... An old brother from yo' pimp dayz has business for you. Recognize!"

If your nose has wrinkled in disgust, turn away now. However, if you laughed out loud or sniggered, then keep going. The only way to take Gangstar seriously is to not take it seriously at all. See, it's so painfully 'street' – or at least what the writers' vision of that is – it's like having pavement concrete pumped right into your brain.

Having characters refer to you with statements such as 'Que pasa, Home Slice' is hilarious – dealing with others that fragrantly swap Ss for Zs while protecting big hookers called 'Lashonda' from even scummier underworld types than yourself even more so. If you like your cliches served hot with a dash of tongue in cheek, you won't go much better than a trip to Crime City.

But putting aside such ridiculousness (and the question as to how on earth the place came to be known as Crime City – asking for trouble, surely?) the game offers you a lot. A big city to explore on foot or in a vehicle, for starters, which while it doesn't bustle in the way a GTA environment does, still manages to come alive on your handset. And within that arena you'll find the chance to shoot down crims (and cops) and even run businesses such as record labels and restaurants (like a proper pimp, recognise?), which adds an extra dimension to proceedings.

It's not all fun, though. The car-based action isn't always on your side, despite its best efforts. Handling is great, in a slippy-sliding cartoony-style, and the driving gives you two choices – the easier Assisted version, where pressing left takes you left, and up takes you up, or Expert, which means forward and backwards is accelerate/break, and left or right means steer in that direction.

But every now and then this clever idea has the awkward tendency to make missions either staggeringly easy or desperately hard – and a handful of the vehicular missions don't seem that suited to either mode, so heavily do they rely on you driving in a tiny space to, say, mow down a traitorous bunch of hos or somesuch. Pixel perfect? Not quite, and a dinky take on one of the world's most notorious games needs to be to truly succeed.

Nevertheless, Gangstar: Crime City is far more fun than cynics might expect. The missions are for the most part varied, and regularly step out of the confines of the 'go here, kill this person, come back' template.

There are sniping missions, tasks that require you to trail a car, some that ask you to ferry people around and protect them from being assassinated – there's even drug-dealing sidemissions (although the game calls them 'candies' – despite extolling their mind-bending effects).

In total then, although it's not the best it could be, Gangstar: Crime City is a good stab/shot/other-violent-metaphorical-verb at turning GTA into mobile form. Solid, if not completely polished.

Plush PSP owners might prefer the real deal, with Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories after all offering the original source material on their console, but the rest of us pimped-up tricked-out gangstars won't go wrong in deciding to stump up a mere fiver for Gameloft's GTA-like fun.

Gangstar: Crime City

A competent take on making a mobile GTA – not perfect, but offers reliable quick-fix fun.
Score